


in your most frail gesture

by hellebored



Series: freedom's in the fighting [3]
Category: Helix (TV)
Genre: Anana Is Tired, F/M, Implied/Referenced Torture, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-28
Updated: 2018-05-28
Packaged: 2019-05-14 18:06:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,892
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14774543
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hellebored/pseuds/hellebored
Summary: Anana deals with ghosts.Set about a year afterfreedom's in the fighting.





	in your most frail gesture

**Author's Note:**

> in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,  
> or which i cannot touch because they are too near. [(x)](https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/somewhere-i-have-never-travelledgladly-beyond)  
>  _\-- ee cummings_

The brightness, half-blinding and disorientingly strong, comes from lights hanging overhead.

Slowly shapes slide into focus, accompanied by a high-pitched whine like mosquitoes buzzing by Anana’s ears that she vaguely registers as sound returning after oxygen deprivation. She’s in what looks like her summer kitchen. The countertops blur at their edges; all the objects in the corners of her vision warp into hazy lines that seem to pulse with the heavy beat of her heart.

She drags air into her lungs and tries to focus: she recognizes the hazy shimmer, the adrenaline edge. It isn’t real. _This_ isn’t real.

The first few times had seemed bad, but they’d been testing her on an exponential ramp, seeing how much she could take. Apparently a lot for her size. Maybe it's worth a certain amount of grim pride, sort of like an officer not pissing themselves when they first get tazed so they know what it’s like.

Unlike a simple and relatively straightforward electrical shock, their cocktails progressed quickly in their levels of cruel sophistication: _how much can you take_ seems to be an important datapoint for a bunch of assholes in case the _other_ assholes get ahold of you. That justification’s always been lost on her. It doesn’t matter so much who’s delivering the shocks when you’re the rat in the cage.

Either way, eventually the rat gets too fucked up to be useful and ends up in the trash.

There’s a shadow at the edge of her vision, moving down a hallway. As it moves closer it resolves into the shape of a man. A face she loves: one she misses so much it burns like a knife in the gut to see it show up so casually, like she hasn’t seen the footage, like she hasn’t seen the photographs.

Because it's Sergio, but Sergio’s dead.

She remembers the words, hears them taunted over and over in different voices. She’d lost track, after a while, of how many. A revolving door of assholes who’d thought they could take her down to size _—_

_It’s a shame, really. He’s dead. He died alone, begging for his life. He never mentioned you. He’s dead. Did you actually think he cared? He’s dead. It’s your fault. He’s dead. You were his mistake. He’s dead because of you._

“...was just talking to Tulok. He says Thomas shot the bear we've seen circling some of the fishing holes, so there’s one less thing we have to worry about eating us.”

Anana hears his voice like he’s speaking through water, or like she’s drowning in it.

She shakes her head vehemently, hard enough to make her neck object. This is how they make it seem real, suggestion of the ordinary. _Imagine you’re at home. It’s warm. You’re safe. Who’s there with you? What have you told them?_

_How do you get there? What are the coordinates?_

“Fuck you,” she grinds out, because she's so, so _tired_ of this. “Fuck your games, and fuck you for killing him.”

The blurring shape of Sergio goes still.

He raises his hands palms out in a non-threatening display meant to placate her. It isn’t the way the Sergio she’d known would’ve acted. He wouldn’t slide into her hallucinations like some slick-edged evangelist peddling reason.

He'd be beside her, fighting, bloody knuckles, bared teeth. Telling her to stay strong. _Fight. Don't give in._

“Nobody’s dead,” Sergio says, moving slowly forward like somebody talking down a jumper from the ledge.

She doesn’t want to hear the words they put into his mouth. It’s bad enough they owned him when he was alive: they don’t get to twist the memory of him too.

She rocks forward and feels the edge of the counter—the table she’s chained to, most likely. She’s so tired. There’s nothing more she can tell them, nothing more she knows. She feels tears slipping down her face. Soon it’ll be over, and she’ll come back to herself choking on her own vomit and trying not to rest her head in it.

She’s going to kill these people. She’s going to kill them. She’s _—_

A voice cuts through the encroaching fog.

“What’s the hardest of the senses to fool during interrogation? What do you _concentrate_ on if you think you’re being interrogated?”

It sounds like Sergio's voice; it morphs into her handler’s. The word tumbles out effortlessly, trained into her through the most effective method of learning: direct experience.

_Smell._

She closes her eyes and breathes in, and after a few breaths she gives a mirthless laugh. “Antiseptic.”

“What else? Concentrate.”

She pushes the lemon scent aside and tries to focus past the the heavy beat of her heart: engine grease, earthy and sour. Plastic bags in the trash that had held frozen fish, still carrying their briny residue. Day-old coffee in the maker.

There’s the sound of a container being opened and set on the countertop, and then another scent, pungent and unmistakable, of playdough.

Not the bare titanium of a cell. Not the astringent citrus cleaner pervasive in a medical examiner’s room.

Machine parts. Food. Children's toys.

_Home._

Anana turns her back against the counter and slides down onto the floor.

Sergio joins her, sitting close enough to touch, and waits until she leans her trembling body against him to put an arm around her shoulders.

“You’re okay,” he says, rubbing her arm. It only makes her cry harder; there’s nothing about this that’s okay. She feels broken, hollowed out. All the things they took, everything they made her do, and now she’s losing her sanity too.

“I don’t know.” The words are raspy: she gives a wet-sounding cough. She presses her hands against her eyes and takes in a shuddering breath. “I don’t know.”

Sergio squeezes her shoulder. “Were you washing dishes?”

She looks at him in confusion. “I don't know,” she mumbles, echoing herself inanely.

“Your hands are wet,” he adds gently, pointing it out to her like she’s a child.

She looks at her hands; the dampness has started to dry and leave a lacy rime of suds behind.

Suds, and a harsh lemon smell. She curls her fingers: the nails cut into her palms.

“The soap…”

Sergio glances up at the sink. A full bottle of bright yellow antibacterial dish liquid rests near the counter’s edge.

His lips press against her hair. “I’ll throw it out.”

Her throat clenches tight.

What he can't throw out are the things she's done. He can't excise those two years. He can't carry it for her. She feels a flash of resentment at how little a lifetime of violence seems to have affected him, but the anger burns out fast and leaves nothing but sour, shaky guilt behind: if he struggles she might not even know. He's long-since been trained out of the ability to _show_ it.

They tried, with her. Looks like it didn’t quite take.

It’s growing harder to keep her head upright. Folding over head-first onto the linoleum wouldn’t sound so bad if she didn’t have a toddler who’d be home soon who might be concerned at the sight of mommy passed out on the kitchen floor.

As if he has the same thought, Sergio helps her stand and guides her down the hall to their bedroom. Moving on autopilot, her fingers are too clumsy to undo the clasp of her bra, so he does it for her, and when she fumbles with a sweater he helps her slide it over her head.

She’s nearly sunk into welcome, exhausted unconsciousness when his weight settles behind her on the bed. “I called Tulok,” he says, drawing her hair back from her face. “He’ll look after Addy tonight.”

 _Fuck_. Anana blinks, eyes stinging, _again_. He's right; obviously Atuat shouldn't see her like this, all broken edges. Probably shouldn’t be around her at all, if she’s going to _—_ if this happens again, if it keeps happening _—_

Sergio drapes his arm over her waist the same way he always does, the soft pressure of his hand against her stomach like an anchor guiding her to stay.

“I keep thinking about what would've happened if she was in the room,” she whispers. “I can’t…”

If she ends up standing in her kitchen screaming at her _three-year-old_ to go fuck herself _—_

He sighs. Running his fingers through her hair, he says, “she'd have seen something you didn't want her to see and we'd’ve talked about it. Kids are tough.”

“ _Tough_ is brushing it off when you fall and bruise your knee, it’s not watching your mother hallucinate about being jacked up on _drugs_. She’s _three_. If I can’t… if I can’t keep myself from being like that around her, maybe I shouldn’t _—_ ”

Sergio cuts in abruptly: “you know what's tough on kids? _Not having parents._ ”

“Lots of kids have _shitty_ parents they’d be better off without _—_ ”

“ _Nothing_ about what happened makes you shitty,” Sergio says, raising his voice for the first time. Strong persistent fingers tug at her shoulder until she's lying on her back with her face visible, which means Sergio’s is too; he swallows, tension in his jaw. “Just because Ilaria gets rid of people they see as liabilities doesn't mean they weren't _fixable_. Stop looking at yourself like you still work for them.”

Anana's eyes slide away from his face, mouth trembling. She lets out a long shaking breath and says, “I can't exactly walk into a therapist’s office. If I'm even a little honest I'll either end up in prison or they'll _commit_ me.”

The corner of his mouth curls up in spite of the soft, serious edge to his eyes. “So you _lie_ ,” he says, raising a brow.

“I didn't used to be very good at lying."

“I never said you were _good_ at it," he says dryly.

She rolls her eyes. He's one to talk, considering she's seen through a majority of his bullshit since day one, but he's come a long ways since then. Become the sort of man _—_ the sort of _friend—_ who carries somebody else when they're too weak to stand on their own: a terminal mistake, in their former profession. Another operative gets shot, you leave them where they lay. They start to crack, you shoot them.

Maybe she’s been a shitty liar all along, but as good a liar as _he_ is, as good at killing, as good at manipulating, he’ll never be reduced to that again. A terminal mistake, in their former profession, is letting yourself be human.

She feels the knot of nausea slowly unravel in her stomach. Maybe they left her with a few scars, some uglier than others, but she’s not alone. She’s got him.

She brushes his fingers with hers. “Thank you. For…”

“Don't,” he says, exhaling tersely. He breathes in and out again, softer this time, and puts his arm around her.

She knows what's underneath his discomfort, but she lets it pass. It's enough that he's there, most of the time. It's enough that he tries. Maybe someday he'll learn to forgive himself.

She rests her head against his chest and waits until his breathing evens out, and then a while longer after that. If he's asleep he might actually listen.

_You're a good man._

Almost imperceptibly, the hand resting over her shoulder presses against her neck, and she smiles under the shadow of the covers.

**Author's Note:**

> WHY DID I WRITE THIS IT HURTS


End file.
